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Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Bookseller
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Literary Critic
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
Samuel Johnson
The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence.
Samuel Johnson
The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.
Samuel Johnson
Too much vigor in the beginning of an undertaking often intercepts and prevents the steadiness and perseverance always necessary in the conduct of a complicated scheme.
Samuel Johnson
Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
Samuel Johnson
Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre
Samuel Johnson
Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it
Samuel Johnson
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
Samuel Johnson
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.
Samuel Johnson
Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
Samuel Johnson
That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
Samuel Johnson
The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.
Samuel Johnson
No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.
Samuel Johnson
What signifies protesting so against flattery when a person speaks well of one, it must either be true or false, you know if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me, than to sit s
Samuel Johnson
Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.
Samuel Johnson
The insolence of wealth will creep out.
Samuel Johnson
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
Samuel Johnson
Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.
Samuel Johnson
Of all the griefs that harass the distress'd, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart.
Samuel Johnson
Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.
Samuel Johnson
